Randomalia
Life finds a way: in search of England’s lost, forgotten rainforests: Few people realise that England has fragments of a globally rare habitat: temperate rainforest. I didn’t really believe it until I moved to Devon last year and started visiting some of these incredible habitats. Temperate rainforests are exuberant with life. One of their defining characteristics is the presence of epiphytes, plants that grow on other plants, often in such damp and rainy places. In woods around the edge of Dartmoor, in lost valleys and steep-sided gorges, I’ve spotted branches dripping with mosses, festooned with lichens, liverworts and polypody ferns.
At least these are genuine primeeeeval survivals: unlike what these conspiracy theorists posit: A dedicated group of YouTubers and Reddit posters see the Singer Building and countless other discarded pre-modern beauties and extant Beaux-Arts landmarks as artifacts of a globe-spanning civilization called the Tartarian Empire, which was somehow erased from the history books. Adherents of this theory believe these buildings to be the keys to a hidden past, clandestinely obscured by malevolent actors.
Am reminded of Historians Admit To Inventing Ancient Greeks: the idea of inventing a wholly fraudulent ancient culture came about when he and other scholars realized they had no idea what had actually happened in Europe during the 800-year period before the Christian era.
Unfortunately I can't find the link to the non-existent made-up centuries in history hoax.
However, I am entirely here for this: Civilizations don’t really die. They just take new forms: 'The idea of collapse is appealing because it allows us to handwave away the political reality of how civilizations transform'.
When Life Gives You “Great Material”: It puzzles me when people congratulate a writer, or any artist, on having “such great material” from a difficult past. I don’t recall this happening before I moved to New York, but it probably did. It’s such a strange way of looking at things, to me, that various strangers must have said it many times before it finally struck me as a common point of view. But the thing about a bonkers childhood and any resulting trauma is that it doesn’t all just leap out of your brain and heart and onto the page.
Are we not reminded of Mr W Self expressing bitter resentment that Edward St Aubyn had just such material from his own childhood, so unlike Self's own dreary idyllic upbringing in placid Hampstead Garden Suburb?
Did anyone else read this and think, 'duckie, your supposed bestie sounds no great shakes either, perhaps you should ditch her as well?' They both sound utterly thoughtless and generally frightful.
This entry was originally posted at https://oursin.dreamwidth.org/3227812.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
comments.